The calm before the annual storm. It was the last normal week before the holiday shopping season begins and the mass media enforces your civic duty to agonize over what to buy mom, and whether Walmart sold enough of it.

We stepped in with our 2010 Gift Guides on five platforms so far, with more to come in the run-up to Black Friday - which seems to be more of a holiday than Thanksgiving itself. Also check out our roundup of the major retailers' game deals in the Black Friday ads - we'll be updating that throughout the weekend. (And, for online shoppers, The Moneysaver is always a reliable source of bargains.)

Increasingly it seems this 'tis the season not for giving, nor for receiving, but for something not as satisfying as either: buying. Hunker down, there are only 34 more shopping days left until sanity is restored.